A proposal that would split the state of California into three separate states has become eligible to appear on the state's ballots in November, California's Secretary of State has confirmed.

The Golden State would become California, Northern California and Southern California, if the proposal were to pass.

Cal3provides this information for how the state would be split up:

-California would have approximately 12.3 million residents and would be centered around Los Angeles County. Five other counties to the north and along the coast would be included.

-Northern California would have 40 counties with approximately 13.3 million people.

-Southern California would have 12.3 million people in 12 counties

Venture Capitalist Tim Draper is behind the initiative. He says splitting the state would lead to improvements in infrastructure and education while lowering taxes: “States will be more accountable to us and can cooperate and compete for citizens," he told the Los Angeles Timesin an email last summer.

If the proposed measure was to be passed, the division of California would be subject to approval by Congress, according to Cal3.

But there's many reasons to be skeptical that voters will choose to split the state.

An April poll from Survey USA found that voters were not in favor of splitting the state by a margin of 4 to 1.

May 14: 5 reasons California won’t split into three states

Jan. 17: New California? 5 times Californians failed to split the Golden State

And many similar efforts have failed in the past.

In 2014, Draper failed with a similar proposal: To split the Golden State into six smaller governments.

Getting an initiative on a November 2016 ballot required about 808,000 signatures. The group behind the effort, largely funded by Draper, claimed to have 1.3 million signatures. But the secretary of state deemed about 40% of them to be illegitimate, and the campaign faltered.

Amid worries of a recession, Statham gained the support of then-Speaker Willie Brown to put a non-binding question on ballots across the state: Should California divide into three states? A bill made it through the Senate before dying in the rules committee.

Contributing: Josh Hafner, USA TODAY

Gerrymandering at it's worst, or since it looks like a venture capitalist seems to be the driving force behind it, is it the "free market"/capitalism at it's worst? [I haven't looked up anything on Draper to get a sense one way or the other.] Alternatively, is this a good idea? It seems like people always go on about how Northern CA and Southern CA are essentially two different states. I guess that could be said about a couple of states though and we never see anything like this from them...

Anyone from CA here think this has a chance of passing? Do you want it to pass? Which of the new CAs will you be in?

Need to more about this before I can say I'm in favor or not. But I will add that WA state could certainly be on the short list of states that would jump at the chance to follow suit. It's basically already is the Seattle area and everybody else.

Tim Draper says splitting the state would lead to improvements in infrastructure and education while lowering taxes: “States will be more accountable to us and can cooperate and compete for citizens," but that doesn’t really make any sense.

He is throwing in “lowering taxes” because most people like that idea and it will get some votes. (Check)

To get more votes he adds “improvements in infrastructure and education. That also sounds great. (Check)

The last statement he adds in search of votes is: “States will be more accountable to us and can cooperate and compete for citizens," (Check)

Let’s take a look at his statements.

So we are going to lower taxes and improve infrastructure and education having less money to pay for said improvements? That sounds like tax cuts paying for themselves, somehow it never really works that way.

His last statement about the new states being more accountable to us is directed at the people in more rural areas of our state that feel their voice is not being heard. That will get some votes but the idea that the three new states would be more accountable to these voters does not hold up because the new states, just like California currently is, would be dominated by major population centers. The rural voters will once again probably feel their voices are not being heard.

I could write volumes on why this is a bad idea and mostly likely will in additional posts but I’ll just add this last issue to think about. What makes Draper think the new states are going to be so willing to share nature resources? I could see Northern California quickly deciding to not send water down to Southern California and California and that would be a disaster for those states.

Totally idiotic proposal. States don't get the right to sub-divide themselves. And I seriously doubt that the Republican-controlled Senate would be that wild about tripling California's representation in their chamber. It's an exercise in futility

One thing that's so amazing about California politics is that ANYTHING can make it onto the ballot as a proposed change to the state constitution. The first time I ever voted was in California in 1986. There was a proposal to vote then on rounding up everyone who was HIV positive and (really) putting them in concentration camps. Of course it didn't pass but it was absurd and certainly unconstitutional and should have never made it to a public vote in the first place. California politics are weird.

An interesting side discussion in this... if a state splits, does it mean all the parts are necessarily/automatically accepted as states again? Would each entity have to re-petition to become a state again?

I read an article that the Southern California would be the 4th largest state (North would be 5th and LA would be 8th) but SoCal would also be the lowest per capita of the 3 and the one with the least water. So a NoCal billionaire wants to create his own state, and since he could not get his very own as he attempted last time, he is taking more of the north this time to help it get support.

Wouldn't it be easier to just split on the north/south boundaries (like he did with NoCal) if this were to ever occur?

An interesting side discussion in this... if a state splits, does it mean all the parts are necessarily/automatically accepted as states again? Would each entity have to re-petition to become a state again?

If Congress says yes, they are states then I guess they would be states.

Totally idiotic proposal. States don't get the right to sub-divide themselves. And I seriously doubt that the Republican-controlled Senate would be that wild about tripling California's representation in their chamber. It's an exercise in futility

One thing that's so amazing about California politics is that ANYTHING can make it onto the ballot as a proposed change to the state constitution. The first time I ever voted was in California in 1986. There was a proposal to vote then on rounding up everyone who was HIV positive and (really) putting them in concentration camps. Of course it didn't pass but it was absurd and certainly unconstitutional and should have never made it to a public vote in the first place. California politics are weird.

Exactly. Think was discussed before. A complete waste of time and effort.

There is zero chance of this happening. Even if the voters voted for it there is no way the congressional Democrats that run the state would approve it. Why would they? I wouldn't. Right now California is as blue as blue can be - that's a ton of electoral votes. They aren't going to agree to put that at risk. Plus the division would probably go Democrat north, Republican east, and who knows what south. That's more senators, governors, etc that are today solidly Democrat that would be a mixture going to Washington or having influence over local issues. They aren't ever going to approve that.

But they won't have to. I'm sure on the run-up to the November election if this thing even has a 20% chance of passing they'll run commercials showing our impending doom if it passes and scare everyone away from it.